


Time And Time And Time Again

by coralysendria



Category: The Tomorrow People (1973)
Genre: Gen, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Teleportation, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:33:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7151378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coralysendria/pseuds/coralysendria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen and Andrew run into one another on completely unrelated missions for the Guardians of Time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time And Time And Time Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadySilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/gifts).



> Beta'd by the awesome Bethynyc.
> 
> Text in italics and enclosed by colons ( _:thus:_ ) indicates telepathic speech.

**1463**

As the knife came at him, Stephen jerked desperately to the side. He grabbed the bandit's wrist and yanked, using the man's own momentum against him. The bandit smacked into the cottage's low stone wall head first and tumbled to the ground, his body limp. Red ran along his fallen blade. Stephen gasped as the pain suddenly hit him; his hand came away from his side smeared in blood.

"Smashing," he murmured, reverting to the idiom of his youth. "Thanks a lot."

He glared at the fallen bandit, but when he knelt beside the man to check for a pulse, his hands were gentle. He sighed in relief when he found one; had the man died at his hands, he would never have been able to forgive himself. His fingers splayed across the bandit's forehead as he rearranged the man's memories of their encounter; when he woke, the bandit would remember only that he found a tempting victim who escaped. Finished, Stephen wiped the blood from the man's knife and sheathed it.

If the man hadn't jumped him from behind, he would have just jaunted away, but the bandit had sliced the straps of Stephen's belt pouch, spilling the contents to the ground, contents that included -- among other anachronistic devices -- Stephen's time disk. He was certainly not leaving any of it in the hands of a fifteenth-century outlaw. 

He levered himself to his feet, clutching his bleeding side. The wound was bad, but not fatal as long as it was properly treated soon. That was easy enough; his mission here was accomplished, so he simply had to report to the Hall of Guardians and thence to the Healer's Hall. Zenon wouldn't ask for his report before he'd been healed; the old man was sometimes a pain in the ass about protocols, but he did have a soft spot for Stephen, due, in part, to Stephen's role in rescuing Zenon's grandson some decades back.

Stephen slowly gathered his gear, stuffing it back into the leather pouch. Some telepathic races couldn't bear to touch leather, but it didn't bother him, perhaps because he was one of the first telepaths on his homeworld, and thus closer to the past. Or maybe it was just a personal quirk. Whatever the reason, there was no point in leaving it behind, and if the bandit found it upon waking, his true memories might return.

He felt a brief stab of panic when he couldn't immediately find his time disk, but then a glint of iridescence led him to it. In the scuffle with the bandit, it had been kicked aside, into the roots of a tree. He bent to pick up the disk, and as he did, a new spike of pain went through his side, and fresh blood seeped between his fingers. His vision darkened for a second as he steadied himself against the tree, one hand splayed against the trunk, one hand clutching his side. 

"Maybe bending over's not such a good idea."

He slowly straightened and reached out, instead, with his mind, telekinetically flipping the time disk into his open hand. The comforting weight landed in his cupped palm but as soon as he closed his fingers about the smooth metal, he knew something was wrong. Instead of a slightly warm sensation in his hand, the disk felt hot, and throbbed like a tiny heart.

Stephen opened his hand. Time disks were designed to be small enough that people felt comfortable closing their fists over them, while at the same time being just large and heavy enough to be hard to lose or break. Despite that solidity, however, time disks could still be fragile -- Stephen had once destroyed one by stomping on it -- and he could see a crack marring the smooth, iridescent surface of his.

He cursed, long and viciously, using words that he'd learned from Ginge when neither John nor TIM were listening, adding a few he'd picked up from Tyso along the way. None of it did anything to help the time disk, so after he finally came to the end of his extensive repertoire of colorful language, he considered his options.

Rescue, he knew, was not forthcoming. Guardians on a mission were Guardians alone, his and his friends' long ago rescue of Zenon's grandson Peter notwithstanding. That had been accomplished because Peter had reached out to them. To the Tomorrow People, not to his fellow Guardians of Time. Across centuries, he had put images into their dreams which had eventually led them to him in the first century AD. Stephen supposed he could do the same, but it would take time -- ha! -- time that he might not have. It wasn't like he could just wander into A&E for stitches in the meantime. 

On the other hand, if the disk wasn't too badly damaged, he could perhaps just use it. He probed delicately at the device's telepathic interface and found that it was indeed functional, but it probably only had one more trip in it. He didn't think it could get him as far as the Hall a millennium away, but it _might_ get him as far as twentieth-century London, and _there_ , he could find help. Using a damaged disk was dangerous, but he couldn't exactly stay in the fourteenth century for the rest of his -- he winced -- possibly quite short life.

His mind made up, Stephen closed his fist about the time disk, his other hand still clutching his wounded side. He connected to the interface, projected his destination, and jaunted. 

The human mind was not meant to be able to project a body through time; the time disks used by the Guardians allowed access to the Time Lanes in much the same way that the jaunting belts of Stephen's youth provided the extra boost needed to cross longer distances than they were capable of jaunting on their own. But while the Tomorrow People's belts were powered by TIM, their biotronic computer, time disks were powered by the energy of the user's own body and mind. During normal operation, the energy drawn was negligible. Stephen's damaged disk, however, drew on him far more deeply than he had expected.

Already weakened by pain and blood loss, Stephen reached his destination, and crashed unconscious to the floor.

**1985**

Andrew stepped onto the jaunting pad, clutching his time disk so hard it left marks on his palm. He'd been so excited to be chosen to take a solo mission for the Guardians of Time, but now that it was time to go, his stomach was doing flips. He didn't want the others to think he was scared, so he tried his best to keep his anxiety from showing.

He must not have been quite successful, because Elizabeth's voice sounded gently in his mind. _:Don't worry, Andrew. You'll be fine. Peter wouldn't have chosen you if he didn't think so:_

He nodded slightly. "Well, goodbye, all. See you soon." 

"Be careful, Andrew," John said. "Don't break anything. Remember, you'll be alone -- there were no other Tomorrow People on Earth at the point to which the Guardians are sending you. If you need help, you'll have to use that dream technique that Peter showed you to reach one of us here."

"Yes, John, I know," Andrew replied, letting just a touch of impatience enter his voice. Suddenly he felt much less nervous; John's mother hen attitude could be extremely irritating sometimes. Elizabeth glanced fondly at John and Andrew suddenly realized that John's parental sternness hid his own anxiety on Andrew's behalf.

"One of us could still go with you," Mike suddenly offered from where he stood off to the side, the picture of indifference. "If, you know, you like."

"Thanks, Mike, but Peter did say that I had to go alone."

"Yes," John said in that tone that meant he was thinking hard about something. "He was quite insistent about that, wasn't he? Listen, Andrew, maybe we should -- "

Andrew, realizing that John was about to tell him to stay in the Lab until they could talk to Peter, quickly folded his left hand around the time disk and touched the fingers of his right hand to his jaunting band. The last thing he heard from the present was TIM's sonorous voice bidding him to take care.

"Well, that's that," Mike said. "I'm off, you two. Rehearsal." He stepped onto the jaunting pad himself, and vanished.

John stayed where he was, staring thoughtfully at the empty jaunting pad. "There's something off about this mission," he said slowly. "I know what Peter told us, but...." 

"John," Elizabeth said, a frown drawing her brows together. "Surely you don't think Peter lied to us? To Andrew?"

John turned away from the jaunting pad and sighed. "No, of course not, Elizabeth. But that doesn't mean he told the whole truth, either. I wish you hadn't let him go, TIM."

"I could not have stopped him, John. Andrew _had_ to go."

John looked sharply at TIM's housing. "What are you talking about, TIM? What do you mean Andrew _had_ to go?"

"Now that Andrew has actually gone, I may tell you," TIM said. "Perhaps you should make yourselves comfortable." John and Elizabeth settled on one of the couches and TIM rolled near them. "A few moments ago, John, you told Andrew that there were no other Tomorrow People on Earth at the point to which the Guardians have sent him. That was not, of course, quite correct, for Andrew himself was there, as were Mike and Hsui Tai. As was I."

"Yes, TIM," Elizabeth said, "but none of them had broken out yet, and you were powered down."

"Quite," TIM said. "But then I was not...."

**1975**

Andrew materialized. He was supposed to be ten years in his own past; right about now, little Andrew was probably at school. He tucked his time disk into his pocket and looked around. An attack on the Tomorrow People's first Lab had eventually led to a move. The new Lab had been built a year or so before he broke out. This was the old Lab, dark, deserted, dusty and shabby, lit only by dim standby lights. He could make out the loops of tubing snaking around the chamber to and from the dark hulk of TIM's housing in the center of the ceiling. It reminded him, truth be told, of one of the illusions that he created at his father's hotel: the abandoned dungeon. There was even a heap of rags in one corner. A shiver crawled up his spine at the thought of the Lab so deserted, TIM switched off or dead, the Tomorrow People gone from Earth. It could still happen; they were still, even ten years out from this date, so few, and half of those who had gone before had already left the planet.

Andrew sighed and stepped off the jaunting pad. Peter had suggested this time and place as the perfect base from which to conduct this first solo mission; the others were at the Trig in this time, but if he ran into trouble with which he could not cope on his own, he could always switch TIM on. He had no intention of doing so -- one of the first rules of time travel was to leave no impression on the past -- but he could certainly turn on the lights and the heat. He moved carefully through the dimness and found the manual environmental controls right where John had described them. 

Andrew looked about curiously as the power came up. The differences between the old and new Labs were astonishing. Where his Lab was bright and welcoming, even homey, all honey and amber and the green accents of John's ficus plants, this Lab was almost like a black and white photograph, all chrome and stark, cool surfaces, dimly lit, but with pools of brighter light over the tables and seating areas. He could see the lines of the abandoned Underground station it had once been in the arches and doorways. The only thing that was the same was the soothing wash of soft colors playing over the wall near the jaunting pad, just as they did at home. In the corner a staircase spiraled up to a second level; his own Lab sprawled out in two wings on a single level with the main lounge as pivot point and gathering place. He wondered how John and Mike had managed to build the new Lab, but supposed they had to have had help from the Federation, since it wasn't like the TP could just go out and hire any old contractor.

Andrew settled into one of the seats built into the wall between the upper and lower tiers of the main Lab floor. It was less dusty than he had expected, but according to TIM's perfect memory, the others had been gone from here only a few weeks. Andrew found it a bit lonely, being the only Tomorrow Person on Earth; the others had been a comforting presence at the back of his mind for years, and now there was the merest echo of them -- a memory, more than a presence.

He opened his mind, not sending, just hoping to receive an inkling of another telepath -- maybe something from TIM silent and dreaming above him, or even Mike who would be breaking out soon -- though he knew very well that there was nothing to be heard. Telepaths there might be, but none with the strength to be broadcasting at a level a Tomorrow Person would hear. Mike might be on the verge of breaking out, but he developed telekinesis first and telepathy last.

To his great surprise, though, Andrew detected something -- probably just the psionic resonance of so many telepaths living for so long in a confined space. Not actual people, just an echo of the lives lived here, like a ghost was the echo of a person.

He concentrated on the mental sound and frowned. That wasn't an echo. There was something....

He leaped to his feet as a very real groan sounded from the other side of the Lab. Now that the lights were brighter, he could see that what he had taken for a heap of rags in one corner was actually a person. 

Andrew approached the figure cautiously, but there was no further sign of life. The person was dressed in medieval -looking clothing, and not far from his limp hand was a charred circle. A hint of iridescence showed that it had once been a time disk like the one tucked safely in Andrew's pocket, but this one was clearly never going to be used again.

A time disk meant a telepath, Andrew thought. A time disk and a telepath in the Lab meant either a Tomorrow Person or a Guardian. Here was the source of the echo; he hadn't detected the echoes of the Tomorrow People now gone, but the empty echo of an unconscious mind.

The man lay curled in on himself, his face hidden by longish light brown hair. Andrew reached hesitant fingers toward the pulse point on the man's wrist. It was terribly slow, but it was there.

"Alive," he breathed.

As gently as possible, Andrew rolled him onto his back. The man groaned again, but did not wake. He appeared to be only a few years older than Andrew. His face was grey, and as his other hand came into view, Andrew saw that it was red. 

"You're hurt!"

He reached out with his left hand, reading the man's life force. A stab wound in his side...blood loss...life energies dangerously drained. He opened his eyes and sat back on his heels considering. Whoever he was, the man looked familiar, but Andrew clearly didn't have time to figure out why. He was obviously a time traveler and he needed help -- more help than Andrew could give him. He could jaunt them both to a hospital, but that would involve awkward questions that he could not answer, and he wasn't supposed to leave any mark in the past. He could attempt to heal the wound, but healing wasn't his strongest gift. He knew that there were allies he could call, Saps who would help, but again, he'd be leaving a mark.

Andrew needed help, and he needed advice. Without even looking around, he reached mental fingers behind him and turned TIM on.

"WHO ARE YOU?" TIM thundered. "HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?"

Andrew winced. "TIM, it's me!"

"I do not know you," TIM replied, but his voice was lower.

"It's me, Andrew! You know me...oh. No. You don't know me, not yet."

"Ah," TIM said. "I infer from that statement that you are a time traveler?"

"Yes!"

"A Tomorrow Person?"

"Yes!"

"And why have you come to this time?"

"TIM, I don't have time to explain right now. This man needs help, and I don't know what to do!"

"Stephen!" TIM exclaimed. "What has happened to him?"

Andrew's eyebrows rose. "This is _Stephen?"_ His voice went squeaky with surprise. He had heard stories about Stephen, and seen photographs, but never met him.

"Yes," TIM replied.

"I think he's been traveling in time, too, TIM," Andrew said. "Look by his hand; I think that's a time disk."

"Yes," TIM said. "It was."

"He needs help, TIM. Can you help him?"

"I cannot, Andrew. But you can."

"How? I'm not good at healing!"

"Get him to the jaunting pad."

"Should I get him to a hospital?"

"That would not be wise. Leaving aside, for the moment, how he is dressed, the stab wound would mean that police would be summoned. Now would not be a good time for any Tomorrow Person to come to the attention of the police, especially when they have so recently done so."

"What, then?" Andrew managed to get Stephen up with a combination of telekinesis and main strength -- good thing he wasn't the weedy little kid he'd been when he broke out -- and carried him to the jaunting pad where he gently laid him down. Stephen did not move. 

"I can help you to augment your healing abilities, Andrew, but Stephen is dangerously near death -- not as close as he was the last time this technique was used -- but close enough. This will be difficult for you, but I will assist you."

"What do I have to do?" Andrew asked.

"Get that jacket off him so that we can see the wound."

Andrew could see no easy way to do it. "I think I need scissors, TIM." A pair of scissors materialized on the table. Andrew grabbed them and carefully cut Stephen's clothing away from the wound. 

The jaunting pad lit up, and Andrew realized it could be used in the same manner as the mediprobe couch in his own Lab. "We must heal that wound," TIM said when his scan was complete. "Open your mind to me; I will guide you."

Andrew did so, though not without a moment of hesitation. He should not be doing this. He should be returning to his present and sending help back for Stephen, or he should be having TIM contact the Trig for help...except that the Stephen of this time was at the Trig.... It was a hopeless muddle. If TIM perceived these thoughts, he said nothing, merely placed images in Andrew's mind, showing him what he must do. As Andrew followed the instructions, he had the great satisfaction of seeing the deep cut in Stephen's side closing, the flesh knitting together and smoothing over. When he was finished, all that remained was an angry redness that would fade in time.

Andrew sat back on his heels and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. That had taken more energy than he had hoped. "TIM, you said there was something else?"

"Yes, Andrew," TIM replied. "And the next part will be even harder. Kenny did this once when both John and Stephen had been...well, _killed_ , to put it bluntly, by laser fire."

" _Killed_?!?"

"Indeed. But that is a tale for another time; perhaps John will tell you if you ask. What you must do now is to share your life force with Stephen. You will both need time to recover afterward, but this is a safe place in which to do so."

"You'll have to show me how, TIM." Andrew opened his mind to TIM again. It was not, he saw, a difficult procedure, but it could be dangerous by its very nature. If he shared too much life force with Stephen, he could endanger his own life.

"If I may make a suggestion, Andrew," TIM said, "I believe it would be easier for you afterward if you were get Stephen to bed and make up a bed for yourself before attempting the procedure."

"Good idea," Andrew agreed. Following TIM's directions, he made up a bed for each of them. There was a cubicle built into the Lab's wall for one sleeper, and a sort of trundle bed slid out of the wall nearby.

Once the beds were ready, Andrew returned to the jaunting pad where Stephen was still unconscious. "TIM, can't you just jaunt him to the bed?"

"If he were wearing a jaunting device, I could activate it under remote control, but as he is not, I am unable to help you to move him. It's a very short distance in any case."

"I know, TIM, it's just that I'm a little tired." Andrew managed to get Stephen up again and settled in the bed, then sat down on the edge. He placed his left hand on Stephen's forehead and willed energy into Stephen.

At first, he felt only a gentle warmth in his hand, and Stephen began to gradually look less grey. But the longer it went on, the more it felt as though Andrew was bleeding, his life hemorraghing out through his palm. He even caught himself checking to make sure that Stephen's face wasn't bloody. His arm began to feel too heavy to hold out, and he was so cold.

Just when he thought he could not keep his teeth from chattering, TIM's voice sounded in his mind. From the tone, Andrew got the feeling that TIM had been calling him for some time. _:Andrew, stop. You must stop now. Stephen will be all right.:_

"'Mokay, TIM," Andrew murmured, letting his hand fall away from Stephen. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms; he hadn't felt this chilled since that time he got locked out in a storm.

"Go to bed, Andrew," TIM said gently.

"What about Stephen?"

"I will monitor him. If he needs further assistance, I will call someone who can help. You need to rest now."

"Sounds good." Andrew dragged himself over to the second bed and tumbled into it. He pulled the blankets up to his chin, but was still not warm enough. "Cold, TIM."

"I am turning up the heat, Andrew. You will be warmer soon."

Andrew felt warmth radiating into him from the bed itself. His eyes closed, and in another moment, he was asleep.

The Lab lights dimmed, but TIM maintained vigilance.

 

**1985**

"What do you mean, 'and then you were not?'" John eyed TIM suspiciously. "Do you mean to tell me that Andrew switched you on after he was warned not to?"

"He did, but he had a good reason to do so. Perhaps you would care to see the recording I made?"

John looked at Elizabeth. "Yes, TIM, I think we had better watch it right now."

"John, wait," Elizabeth said. "There's nothing we can do to help Andrew. Is it going to do us any good to watch the recording?"

"It will not do any harm, Elizabeth," TIM assured her.

"All right, TIM," John said. "Show us the footage."

"Very well, then," TIM said. "This is how the Lab looked ten years ago when Andrew arrived...."

 

**1975**

Stephen woke slowly, surfacing from sleep as though climbing through layer upon layer of heavy, muffling, dark wool. Even when he finally opened his eyes, he thought he must still be dreaming, because he couldn't possibly be in the Lab, could he? He'd left Earth decades ago.

A voice sounded in his mind. _:Stephen.:_

_:TIM?:_

_:Thank goodness you are all right.:_

_:Why wouldn't I be?:_ Stephen asked. _:It's my dream, after all.:_

_:You are not dreaming, Stephen. You are in the Lab. The date is June the second, 1975.:_

And Stephen remembered: the fight with the bandit, his jaunt through time and space to the one place where he knew that he could find help. He had returned to the Lab, but at a time when he knew it would be untenanted, when he would least disrupt the time streams. Because he didn't necessarily need human help. TIM was always here. But try as he might, he couldn't remember arriving....

_:What happened?:_

_:I cannot tell you how you arrived here, Stephen, only what happened after you did.:_

_:Well, then?:_

_:You were badly injured. You were healed by another Tomorrow Person who then shared his life energy with you, as Kenny once did. You are both now recovering in the Lab.:_

_:Another Tomorrow Person? What other Tomorrow Person? I tried to reach this date because I knew there would be no other Tomorrow People here.:_

_:That was what I surmised when I saw the time disk. Tell me, Stephen, have you joined the Eternal Order of the Guardians of Time?:_

Stephen pulled a face. _Leave no mark,_ was the mantra, but he would have had to tell TIM in any case, as he needed TIM's help to construct a new time disk. _:You have already guessed that I did.:_

_:And how long has it been?:_

_:Forty years? Something like that.:_

_:Making you approximately sixty-five years old?:_

_:Yes? So?:_

_:And yet you still look no older than approximately twenty-five years old.:_

Stephen shrugged. _:Exposure to the Time Lanes. Remember when we first met Peter? He claimed to be 143 years old.:_

_:Ah, yes.:_

Stephen pressed himself back into his pillow. He was awake now -- more or less -- and hungry, but he could already feel sleep beckoning. As if to reinforce that feeling, TIM spoke again. _:You must sleep, Stephen. Sleep will complete your healing.:_

Stephen's eyes slid closed, but then something else occurred to him. _:You said another Tomorrow Person, TIM. Who? Surely not Mike?:_

_:His name is Andrew. Sleep, Stephen. Sleep.:_

It was more than suggestion; the word was reinforced with soporific delta waves telepathically transmitted. It was a technique that TIM used only very rarely, and if he chose, Stephen would be able to fight the suggestion and remain awake. But he was safe in the Lab with TIM, and he really didn't feel very good. Stephen gave himself up once more to sleep.

**1985**

Elizabeth's hands flew to her mouth and she cried out in horror as on the view screen, the face of the injured man was revealed. "Stephen!"

John glanced at her, then looked back at the screen. "What happened to him, TIM?"

"Stephen had been injured on a mission for the Guardians of Time," TIM replied. "His time disk had been damaged and he was not able to use it to take him back to the Guardians' Hall. Instead, he came to the Lab."

"But, why?" Elizabeth asked. "Surely he would have remembered that we were at the Trig then."

"That is exactly why, Elizabeth," TIM said.

John nodded. "He wouldn't have wanted to run into himself, so what better time to return to the Lab than when he knew he wasn't there? He could get TIM's help without involving any of the rest of us. I imagine that he probably thought he wasn't that badly injured."

"You imagine correctly, John," TIM said. 

"Where is Stephen now," Elizabeth asked. "Right now, in this time?"

"I do not know, Elizabeth," TIM replied. "If he has become a Guardian, it may take a while to locate him. But I shall attempt it, if you insist. I can tell you that with my help, Andrew was able to heal him."

"It's been a long time, Elizabeth," John offered. "He's not a teenager any longer; he knows what he's doing."

Elizabeth nodded. "I know. It's just--" She sighed. "I suppose in some ways I always think of him as that boy who talked to himself in my classroom."

John smiled. "Long time since then, Liz. He'll be all right. They'll both be all right."

Elizabeth nodded again, then glanced at TIM. "Better carry on with the recording, then, TIM."

"As you wish, Elizabeth."

**1975**

When Andrew woke, he did not, at first, remember where he was, but he knew that he wasn't alone; he could feel the presence of another telepath. He opened his eyes to darkness, but even as he frowned, trying to remember where he was, the darkness slowly gave way, revealing the Lab. Not his Lab, of course, but the Lab in the past. He remembered now. 

He yawned and stretched, and cautiously sat up. "TIM?"

"Yes, Andrew?"

"What time is it?"

"It is early morning on the third of June, 1975."

Andrew thought about that. "That's...a long time," he said cautiously.

"Indeed. You both needed the rest, however. How do you feel this morning?"

"All right. Hungry. How is Stephen?"

"He will be fine. He will likely awaken soon."

"May I have breakfast, TIM? The usual?"

"Certainly you may, Andrew, but I do not yet know what your usual breakfast is."

"Oh, of course," Andrew said. "It's easy to forget, despite all the differences in the Lab."

"Differences?"

Andrew bit his lip. "Ah...never mind. Forget I said anything."

He had finished his second bowl of porridge, quietly explored the Lab (poking about in the equipment storage on the second level, rolling his eyes at John's meticulous maintenance logs, sticking his head into the dark room), and was actually peering through the locked gate of the closed station at the London streets of ten years ago when TIM informed him that Stephen was finally awake and waiting for him.

The Lab door slid open as he approached. He had chosen to walk back from the gate, a walk of five or six minutes through the tunnels to give himself time to order his thoughts and decide what he should tell Stephen about his own presence here in this time. He'd already made enough mistakes to get himself barred from future time missions, and he hadn't even left the Lab to begin his own task. Instead, he found himself wondering if he should warn TIM about the SIS invasion of the Lab in a year or so, a break-in that had resulted in the construction of the new Lab in a different part of London. Or maybe he should say something about the Thargon/Sorson war that would spill over into this solar system in a few years. Or what about the rich vein of barlumin so close to where he grew up? He hesitated long enough at the threshold for TIM to notice.

"Andrew? Is there something wrong?"

"Oh, no, nothing," he replied, stepping through the door and allowing it to close behind him. "Just thinking." He approached the table where he was pleased to see Stephen eating a hearty breakfast. The older Tomorrow Person was dressed in modern clothing and obviously much improved. He looked up as Andrew approached the table, setting aside his fork.

"We haven't been properly introduced," he said, "I'm Stephen. Stephen Jameson."

Andrew stuck out his hand, the manners his father had drilled into him automatically taking over. "Andrew Forbes."

Stephen shook hands with a grin, then went back to his breakfast. "I hope you don't mind, but I'm famished." He washed down a mouthful of eggs with a swig of coffee as Andrew settled in a chair opposite him. "Thanks, by the way. TIM told me what you did. I'm glad you happened by."

Andrew nodded uncomfortably. "You're welcome. Though I didn't just happen by; I was sent."

Stephen looked up from his breakfast for a moment and cocked an eyebrow. "Sent?"

Andrew nodded. "I have a mission from the Guardians."

"Really? I hadn't heard of any problems in this time. On the other hand, I was in the fifteenth century, so if something new cropped up after I left...." He shrugged. He finished his breakfast and pushed his plate away. "That was marvelous, TIM. I missed your cooking."

"Thank you, Stephen," TIM replied as he de-atomized the plates.

Stephen leaned back in his chair and looked around the Lab with a slight smile on his face. Andrew wasn't sure how to interpret the expression until Stephen looked back at him. "I missed this place. I grew up here."

"I grew up in a castle," Andrew replied.

"Really?"

Andrew nodded. "Near Loch Ness. My father turned it into a hotel. I used to make the kelpie appear occasionally to entertain guests. Mostly I did ghosts."

"Sounds like fun," Stephen said. "Tell me about your mission."

Andrew hesitated and Stephen frowned. "You can trust me, you know. I'm a Tomorrow Person, like you. And besides that, I've been a Guardian for years."

"You're a Guardian?"

"It's how I got here," Stephen said. "You saw the time disk...or what was left of it, anyway."

"Why did you come _here,_ instead of going back to the Hall?"

Stephen shrugged. "I was attacked by a bandit. I fought him off--" His hand went to his side and he winced with remembered pain. "--more or less, but the disk was too damaged to make the journey all the way back to the Hall. I came here because I know the Lab well enough to jaunt here in my sleep, and I knew that TIM could help me construct a new disk. And I came to this time because I knew that the rest of the Tomorrow People were at the Trig." He gestured at his clothing. "I'm borrowing my own clothes, which is kind of weird, but when you've traveled in time as often as I have, you get used to weird."

"This is my first time alone," Andrew heard himself saying forlornly. He blushed and hung his head, suddenly feeling like a schoolboy, and fearing Stephen's response.

To his surprise, Stephen didn't laugh. "That's one of the other problems with time travel -- you never know what you're going to find when you get there. Me, for example." His roguish grin startled a laugh out of Andrew instead.

"Peter told me this would be an easy first mission," he offered. "Just retrieve a small item and erase some notes."

"What item?"

"He said it related to an old mission, and it was a leftover detail that no one had thought of, that hadn't caused any harm yet, but shouldn't be left lying around."

"Andrew," Stephen said, "what item?"

"Oh," Andrew said, suddenly putting it all together in his mind, "the lid from a Roman urn. The lid--"

"--that has the instructions on how to build a time disk on it," Stephen finished for him, sitting back in his seat as if suddenly unutterably weary. "The instructions that we used to build our own first time disk." He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Oh, Peter."

Andrew frowned. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Who authorized your mission, Andrew? Who sent you here?"

"Peter."

"There are two things you always have to remember about traveling in time," Stephen said. His voice took on a lecturing tone that rather reminded Andrew of John. "The first is to leave no mark. Leave no traces of yourself in the past." He opened his eyes and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table in front of him. "And the second is that a Guardian on a mission is a Guardian alone. No contact can be made with the future, and no help can be sent."

Andrew thought about that for a moment. "So.... So Peter somehow knew that you were in trouble and made up a mission to send you help?"

Stephen nodded. "But in order for that to happen," he said, "someone will have to _tell_ him that I was in trouble."

"Which logically means that you will make it back to the Hall."

"But only if I help you complete your mission and we share your time disk," Stephen said. "Peter's right about one thing; we really shouldn't leave those plans just lying around, and we _did_ forget about them. We were more concerned with making sure that Cotus didn't remember how to make a steam engine." He snorted. "Do you have any idea how often Guardians have to be dispatched because steam engines crop up in the wrong century?"

"Um...no?"

"There's a whole team dedicated to just that. The steam engine is very popular."

"Is that what you were doing in the fifteenth century?"

"Oh, no. Something else completely."

Andrew cocked his head, but Stephen only gazed at him blandly. He wasn't going to let Andrew know what his mission had been, and Andrew sensed that there was no point in pushing. "All right," he said instead. "How do we do this, then?"

"What was your original plan?" Stephen asked.

Andrew shrugged. "Jaunt in, get the lid, jaunt out again. Jaunt into her office, get the notes, jaunt out again. Simple enough."

Stephen nodded. "And now you can do both at once. Nice and neat."

"If I may," TIM interjected, "I do not believe it will be quite so simple as that. The gladiator vase has become quite famous. Professor Garner was, as you will recall, Stephen, quite justly proud of it as an archaeological find."

"But if I understand the story correctly," Andrew protested, "it was _planted_ so that _someone_ would find it; how does she get credit for that?"

"The professor does not know that, Andrew," TIM said gently. "No one knows that except Peter and us. Professor Garner has reason to be proud of her find. That the vase survived the centuries intact is, in itself, a wonder."

"I suppose," Andrew said. He subsided into his seat. Something about this professor taking credit for Peter's work just rubbed him the wrong way.

"She's a nice old lady," Stephen said. "Let her be."

"We're planning to steal from your nice old lady," Andrew reminded him.

Stephen wrinkled his nose. "I know."

"If I may continue?" TIM said.

"Sorry, TIM," Andrew and Stephen chorused. They grinned at one another.

"As I was saying, the gladiator vase has become quite famous. Professor Garner wrote a book on it, and the gladiator school which you will have cause to remember, Stephen. The book, titled _The Gladiator Vase_ , has been adapted into a television movie which is even now being filmed near Silchester. The markings on the lid are the subject of much debate, and there are hundreds of drawings of them. There are even those who believe that they are imbued with some mystical energy that allows humans to develop superpowers."

"That sounds like something Professor Cawston said," Stephen mused, his eyes thoughtful. Whatever he was seeing, Andrew realized, it wasn't in the Lab.

"What do we do?" he asked. "If it's that well-known, there's no way we can just take the professor's notes. Other people will have made copies of the markings -- maybe that's even how it all started. Maybe that's how that guy got to the first century to begin with."

Stephen shook his head. "No, I don't think so. The technology that Gaius was using was different. A time pump, instead of a disk. He knew what Peter was, and he was keeping him alive in case he needed him, but that time pump didn't require a telepath, unless Gaius was one himself." He was silent a moment, then shrugged, meeting Andrew's wide eyes.

"A _telepath?_ But he tried to _kill_ you. And he completely changed Earth's history."

"You will find, Andrew," TIM said, "that just because a being is telepathic, it does not mean that they necessarily have the same morals and ethics as you do."

"But--"

"You'll have heard of Tricia Conway?" Stephen said. "Maybe even met her?" He waited for Andrew's nod, then continued. "Tricia was _always_ a telepath, even before she broke out. But until she did, she had no problems killing. She might not have _liked_ it, but she would _do_ it, if required." He shrugged. "It's a difference of degree, I suppose, between low-level telepaths who can't jaunt, and fully-developed Tomorrow People. Gaius _might_ have been one of the former. Or he might have just been someone who found one of the work-arounds for accessing the Time Lanes without a telepath's aid. Either way, it doesn't matter right now. _Our_ task is to make sure that the diagram for making an neutron interton circuit isn't just lying around."

"So what do we do?" Andrew asked.

Stephen smiled slowly. Andrew blinked, then leaned back a bit. "We're going to have to steal the lid...from us."

~*~*~

"The neutron interton circuit," Stephen said, "is what makes time travel possible."

"I thought it was the flux capacitor." Andrew gave him a butter-wouldn't-melt look. He couldn't resist; the way Stephen phrased it sounded just like the movie that he, Mike, and Elizabeth had just seen last week.

"Ha ha," Stephen said. "I've never heard that before." He poked at Andrew's time disk, which lay on the table between them while TIM analyzed it. "But you can't just whip one up and take off down the Time Lanes. You also need to be a telepath...generally speaking."

Andrew frowned. "Generally speaking?"

"There are ways around everything," Stephen said darkly. He glanced upward. "Well, TIM? Can you fabricate another one, or do I need to get out the neutron microscope?"

"Now that I have had a chance to study a proper time disk," TIM replied, "and to observe the safeties built into it, I believe I can."

"Great, TIM. If you would, please?"

While the table where Andrew's disk lay remained softly lit from beneath, light began to pulse in the depths of the other table, as TIM began his work. In perhaps fifteen minutes, a small disk which appeared identical to the original lay in the center of the other table.

Andrew reached for it, but Stephen grabbed his arm. "No, wait. Let me check it first." He looked up at TIM's housing. "Not that I'm doubting your work, TIM, but better safe than sorry."

"I quite agree, Stephen."

Stephen moved over to a seat at the other table and levitated the disk so that he could look at it from all angles without touching it. The surface was smooth and perfect. He gently lowered it back to the tabletop and, concentrating, probed at the telepathic interface. That, too, seemed sound, so he reached out to pick it up. Andrew made an abortive movement as Stephen's fingers closed on the disk, but nothing untoward happened. Stephen let out a silent sigh of relief. The disk lay in his palm, radiating a slight, tingly warmth which indicated its readiness. 

"It's perfect, TIM. Well done."

"Thank you, Stephen."

"Now there's one other thing that we need. You scanned the lid of the gladiator vase pretty thoroughly when I first brought it back, didn't you?"

"I did."

"Can you make a duplicate of it?"

"Yes, I can."

Andrew frowned. "I see where you're going with this, but what good will that do?"

"I believe what Stephen is proposing," TIM said, "is that I should make a duplicate of the lid in all respects _except_ changing one of the symbols on the diagram."

"Exactly!" Stephen couldn't quite keep a smug smile off his face. "What we'll do is get into the Lab and swap the lids. We'll make sure we go after TIM has scanned the original, but before I returned it to Professor Garner, so that the diagram can be followed and we -- the 'we' in the past, that is -- can make our disk. That way our own personal history won't be changed, and we can still go rescue Peter."

"Won't the professor notice that the lid is different when you give it back to her?"

"She might," Stephen conceded.

"I cannot make a lid that will stand up to radiocarbon dating, Stephen. If Professor Garner suspects that the lid that you are returning to her is not genuine, she might have it tested."

Andrew shook his head. "This is far more complicated than I expected when Peter recruited me."

"Dealing with time often is," Stephen replied. He was definitely going to have a long talk with Peter when he got back to the Hall. "The only other thing we can do is to deface the original, and we can't do that until after the first time disk is made, which means we can't just go back to the first century and change the markings when the lid is made."

"We're going to have to break into the publishing office, too," Andrew pointed out, "and change the manuscript."

"And Professor Garner's office," Stephen added, "in addition to the Lab...which will be my job, I think."

"Why you?"

"Because if John or the others are here, I can get away with jaunting in or out. TIM, you _can_ change any computer records of the lid?"

"Of course, Stephen." 

"Is there any chance that the publisher's office has the manuscript on computer?" Andrew asked. "That might simplify things a bit."

Stephen shook his head. "We're still a few years too early for that." He sighed. "All right. One problem at a time. Let's deal with the lid first." He looked over at Andrew. "Ready?"

"What, right now?"

He shrugged. "No time like the present. Besides, there's nothing more we can do here. Listen, Andrew, if something goes wrong, I want you to go back to your own time. Don't come back here. Okay?"

"But--"

"Go back to your own time and contact the Guardians," Stephen said firmly.

Andrew sighed. "All right."

"Good." He picked up the new time disk. "Link to me," he directed Andrew, "and follow my lead." He waited until he felt Andrew's mental touch, then linked their two time disks together. "See you in a little while, TIM." He jaunted, taking Andrew along with him.

They reappeared in the Underground tunnel in the level above the Lab. Andrew looked around in puzzlement. "Why here?"

"Because you're a stranger here; if you jaunt directly into the Lab, TIM will raise a fuss. If I got the timing right, it's the middle of the night, so there shouldn't be anyone there. John sometimes sleeps in the Lab, but he still mostly lives at his parents' house. Elizabeth has her own flat, and I live with my parents. I'll be able to jaunt in, change the lid, and jaunt back to you here in five or six minutes. After that, we can figure out the rest of it."

"All right."

"Just stay here, okay?"

Andrew glanced around at the dingy, barely-lit tunnel. "Come to cosmopolitan London," he said. "See the sights."

"Deface priceless archaeological treasures," Stephen agreed. "I'll be right back."

The Lab was silent and dim when Stephen jaunted in. Rather than using the jaunting pad which would immediately alert TIM to his arrival, he materialized just inside the door that separated the Lab from the station tunnels. It was always odd for him to return to the Lab after so long. He felt a bit melancholy sometimes to think that the place he had grown up would, in a few short years, be abandoned in favor of a new space. He knew that Mike would sometimes come here when he wanted to avoid the other Tomorrow People, but none of the others did. Elizabeth spent a great deal of time at the Trig, and while John might be old-fashioned, he definitely wasn't nostalgic.

Still, once the Tomorrow People shifted to the new Lab, the old one made a perfect base for Time Guardians who needed to visit twentieth-century (or later) Earth. In time, it would become something of a hostel for Time Guardians, and they had the technology to secure it against the hostility of any Earth-based power. 

He moved away from the door, quietly. TIM's sensors had probably noted his presence, but because he belonged here, TIM wouldn't take more than cursory notice. The lid was right where he expected it to be, sitting in the middle of one of the Lab's two tables, a dark silhouette against the table's lighter surface. The five time disks scattered around it glittered in the low light. He picked it up.

"Stephen?"

He muttered one of Ginge's most vicious curses, but when he turned, his expression was calm and relaxed. John blinked at him blearily from where he was raised on one elbow in the sleeping alcove Stephen himself had so recently occupied.

"Stephen, what are you doing?"

"Sorry, John. I didn't mean to wake you. I didn't realize you were staying here tonight." Stephen deliberately kept his voice light; he hadn't seen John in years, but he remembered that his friend could be sensitive to tone. He abruptly realized how very _young_ John was, and how much older he himself was: he was old enough now to be his friend's grandfather. It had been a long time since he had been home.

"You didn't have the dream again, did you?"

John meant the dreams from Peter that had led them to the gladiator vase. Stephen shook his head. "No, not this time. I just couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd take another look at this." He hefted the lid in his hand. "You should go back to sleep, John. One of us should be rested, eh?"

"Try not to stay up too late, Stephen," John said. "If for no other reason than in case Peter tries to contact us again."

"I won't be too long. I promise."

"All right, Stephen. See you in the morning." John lay back down and pulled the blankets up over his head. 

Stephen shook his head fondly. "Good night, John." He waited until he sensed that John was truly asleep again, then looked back at the lid in his hand. With a minor telekinetic effort, he changed one of the symbols lining the lid's underside, then set it gently back onto the table. Tomorrow, the Stephen of the present would have the brilliant idea of tracing Peter by asking Professor Garner about the gladiator vase, and he would return the stolen lid to her.

With a last look around the Lab, Stephen jaunted.

~*~*~

There was one good thing about being a telepath waiting for a telepath, Andrew thought, as Stephen materialized. At least you didn't jump when they showed up.

"How did it go?"

Stephen shrugged. "All right. John was there."

"What happened?"

"Nothing. He woke up, saw me, asked what I was doing, then went back to sleep." He smiled smugly. "And that's why _I_ was the one to go and take care of the lid."

"All right, then, clever bones, what next?" If it was Mike acting like that, Andrew would get annoyed, but somehow, he couldn't get annoyed at Stephen. Maybe because he didn't know him as well as he knew Mike.

"The lid will go back to Professor Garner tomorrow. I don't know how long it will take her to examine it. We can't bet on her _not_ looking at it, though, since some nasty little schoolboy stole it and vanished right in front of her eyes. She's going to want to make sure it wasn't damaged."

"And then she's going to want to refer to her notes," Andrew said. "Wait a second," he said, as an idea occurred to him. "Maybe we shouldn't be trying to change the book manuscript...maybe we should be trying to change Professor Garner's first set of notes. If the lid is as valuable as all that, then it was probably kept locked up and she probably worked from her initial notes."

"That makes sense." Stephen clapped Andrew on the shoulder. "We'll make a Time Guardian of you, yet. We need to find out when the vase was found. We can figure out from there when to change Professor Garner's notes. C'mon, let's go back to 1975; we're going to need TIM's help for this part."

 

**1975**

"What Professor Garner did not tell you, Stephen, is that _she_ was the one to discover the gladiator vase."

"She didn't _say_ it, TIM," Stephen protested, "but she was terribly passionate about it."

"With good reason. Professor Freda Garner is the granddaughter of Professor Selwyn Garner who was one of the original archaeologists to excavate the Roman town at Silchester. His specialty was the gladiator school beyond the city's walls. He was, apparently, quite an indulgent grandfather for someone of the Victorian generation, as he often brought his young granddaughter Freda to the site with him. It was while on one such visit that young Miss Garner discovered the vase."

Andrew frowned thoughtfully. "If her grandfather was the actual archaeologist when the vase was found, then it's not _her_ notes we would need to change."

"No," Stephen agreed. "Most likely not."

"It is noted in the records about the vase that the discoverer is Freda Garner," TIM said, "but the subsequent work regarding the find is by the elder Professor Garner, at least up until the present when our Professor Garner began her book. Which was not, despite its title, just about the vase, but about the gladiator school itself, and the legends that grew up about it after a great fire there in the first century AD."

Andrew glanced at Stephen in time to catch a sheepish expression on his face. "Oops," he said when he realized Andrew was watching him.

"And you call yourself a Guardian of Time?" Andrew grinned.

"To be fair, I wasn't at the time. The only guardian involved in the whole thing was Peter. And besides, the implosion wasn't our fault -- it was the illegal time pump that Gaius was using."

"Still."

"Ha ha," Stephen said. "When did she find the vase, TIM?"

"In 1914, right before the outbreak of the first world war."

"Tell me we don't have to go to World War I to get those notes," Andrew protested. 

"We don't have to go to World War I to get those notes." Stephen grimaced. "We have to go to right _before_ World War I." He glanced up at TIM's housing. "We're going to need to know everything you can tell us about Freda Garner, TIM."

"Very well. Freda Catherine Garner was born in 1898...."

~*~*~

**1914**

This time, when they materialized in the past, they were dressed in AE suits borrowed from the Lab's stores, the built-in spectra-shifts clothing them as young men of 1914. They were also each carrying a fully-charged stun gun.

"Don't use this unless you absolutely have to," Stephen had lectured as he handed it to Andrew. "We have to be doubly-careful here since this thread of time touches on so many others."

Andrew nodded his agreement. Peter had subjected him to a thorough lecture before choosing him for this mission. He knew the risks. He wondered now, though, what his mission truly had been: retrieve the gladiator vase lid with its neutron interton circuit diagram, or rescue Stephen Jameson? He rather suspected the latter -- how many people would be able to read the diagram, let alone manufacture the circuit, after all -- though he was careful to keep that suspicion from his casual thoughts where Stephen might read it. Stephen, he thought, had his own suspicions. He hoped that this wasn't all going to rebound on Peter; Andrew quite liked the young Guardian.

He looked down at the illusion the spectra-shift had clothed him in. "I feel like I should have a fedora and a bullwhip."

Stephen looked puzzled for a moment, and Andrew thought he wasn't going to catch the reference -- he had been gone from Earth for a long time -- but then he laughed. "You'll just have to make do with your stun gun." 

"Which I'm not really supposed to use."

Stephen grinned. "Now you're getting it!"

"So what do we do now?" Andrew looked about. They had materialized some distance away from the site of the gladiator school excavation which was, itself, a mile or more from the excavations of the town of Silchester (or, to be more accurate, the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum) currently being carried on by the Society of Antiquaries of London. It was May 1914 and in another few weeks, the world would plunge into war. It seemed hardly possible. Andrew's great grandfather had died in the trenches. That man's son, Andrew's grandfather, had only been born a few months ago. He suddenly felt the great weight of time itself pressing on him, vast and immovable. His mission wasn't even all that critical to the flow of history. He couldn't imagine what Stephen and the others had felt at having to save their entire history from the man Gaius who had brought the steam engine to this remote Roman colony in the first century AD. He found himself holding his breath, expecting...who knew what.

"Don't think about it," Stephen said.

Andrew exhaled slowly. "What?"

Stephen put his hand on Andrew's shoulder and leaned forward slightly to meet his eyes. "You were thinking about the war. Don't. There's nothing we can do to change it -- it's part of the Saps' history. Part of _our_ history. Sure, we could jaunt in and save Franz Ferdinand, but then what? A world without the horrors of two world wars? What a wonderful thing -- but is it a world in which the Tomorrow People would develop? Would there even _be_ an Andrew Forbes or a Stephen Jameson?"

"But to stop the war!" Andrew protested. "My grandfather's father is going to die in it."

"And changing that -- not just your great grandfather's death, but the whole of the war -- is no different than introducing the steam engine in the wrong century," Stephen said. "'Leave no mark,' remember. That doesn't just mean on the good occasions or the minor things. It means the awful things, too. The first world war is part of the history of the Earth. We have no right to change that."

Andrew closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Stephen was right, of course. He opened his eyes and nodded. "All right. So what do we do?"

Stephen's fingers tightened briefly on his shoulder, then his hand fell away. "We go find Professor Garner's notebook."

"Do you know where we are?" 

Andrew reddened at the withering look that Stephen gave him, but all Stephen said, in a mild voice, was, "Things have changed a bit since the last time I was here. But--" he squinted at the sky, turned about, then pointed, "--I think it's that way."

It was a lovely, sunny day. As they walked, Andrew began to get a little overheated, so adjusted the controls of his AE suit to compensate for the heat of the day. "It's a shame there isn't a way to alter the lid now. Then we could just find out where the vase is stored and change it, rather than trying to find all the notes on the thing and change those."

Stephen shrugged. "We still have to be able to read the diagram in 1974."

Andrew finished tinkering with his AE suit. An idea occurred to him and he stopped so suddenly that Stephen had walked on several steps before he even noticed.

"Andrew? Is there a problem?"

"A spectra-shift," Andrew breathed. "Is there any way to put a spectra-shift into the lid? To make it look different up until TIM scans it in 1974?" He watched Stephen mull the idea over. "Can we?"

At last, Stephen shook his head regretfully. "I don't think so. For one thing, it would make the lid quite heavy, and they wouldn't be able to resist cutting into it or x-raying it -- and having them find a spectra-shift would be just as bad as having them find a steam engine. Well. So to speak. Not to mention that TIM will be scanning the lid in a few decades, and can't find anything of that nature." He frowned and chewed his lip. "We _might_ be able to...." His voice trailed off as he considered his idea.

Andrew waited, practically dancing with impatience, but finally Stephen smiled. "I think I have an idea that will work. We just need to get the lid. Come on."

Andrew and Stephen reached the farm that now encompassed the site of the gladiator school and turned into the lane. At the house, they were informed that the professor had gone back into town, but that if they were students, they could go on up to the field and have a look around.

"Don't touch anything," the farmer warned, "but have a look around."

"Thank you," Stephen said. They followed the farmer's directions, and soon came upon the excavation site. Stephen stopped at the edge of the field, looking out over the pickets that marked the edges of the gladiator school's walls. A wooden hut stood beyond the picketed area.

Andrew couldn't quite decipher Stephen's expression. He knew the facts of what had happened here two thousand years ago, but he wondered about the spaces between the lines of the story. What had happened to Stephen -- and Peter for that matter -- here? "Does it look familiar now?" he asked in an attempt to lighten Stephen's mood.

The look Stephen turned on him was so sour that Andrew laughed. "You _do_ know that it's been almost two thousand years since I was here last?"

"That depends on how you look at it," Andrew replied. He held out his hand, palm up. "One way, two thousand years." He flipped his hand over. "Another way, just last year. Has the land changed much in a year?"

Stephen gave a grudging laugh. "Point to you. It has, in fact, changed quite a bit." He glanced around, then pointed. "The entrance was over there. There were two guards on duty if the gate was open, but not if it was closed. The school was based on a rectangle, with two stories above ground and a couple below. The central square was sand-covered and that's where the boys were trained."

"Are you familiar with this excavation, then?" 

The young woman now standing only a few feet away had moved so quietly that neither of them had heard her. She was perhaps sixteen, shorter than either of them, dressed quite shockingly for the time in trousers with stained knees and a once-white shirt. A long blonde plait lay over one shoulder; she flicked it impatiently behind her, then tilted her head, bird-like. 

_:It's her!:_ Stephen sounded surprised, but there was only a polite smile on his face as he stepped slightly forward and extended a hand. "Not this excavation specifically, but I have some experience with gladiator schools, and was hoping Professor Garner would let me take a look around. I'm James Stevenson; this is my friend Bruce Forbes."

"Freda Garner. Charmed." She shook their hands briskly. "Professor Garner is my grandfather. I'm sure he wouldn't mind as long as I was with you. I've been helping on this dig since I was a child."

"The perfect guide to the site," Stephen said, offering his arm.

Freda ignored it and strode briskly ahead. "This way."

"Smooth," Andrew said to Stephen as he passed. "Very smooth."

"And you, Mr. Forbes?" Freda said as Andrew caught up to her. "Do you have a specialty?"

Andrew hesitated a moment. "I'm actually...interested in pottery, Miss Garner. James here is the true historian, I'm more of an artist with a classical bent. I love old jars and vases and such, especially if they have scenes of everyday life on them."

_:You call that smooth?:_

Freda's preternatural maturity melted away. "Really? Oh, you must come and see the vase I found yesterday. It's fantastic!"

_:You were saying?:_

_:I take it back,:_ Stephen replied. _:Well done.:_

Freda led them around the pickets toward the hut on the other side. As they neared it, she drew a chain and key from around her neck. She fitted the key into the padlock on the hut's door. "Grandfather keeps everything we find here until it can be catalogued and carted back to the Society." She left the door open to admit some light. Shelves lined one wall, filled with all sorts of bits and pieces. Crates were stacked opposite, waiting to be packed with items for later study. A neatly-made cot was tucked against the far wall. All of this Andrew noted only in passing, for on a table just inside the door rested the famed gladiator vase. It was a plain terra cotta urn with blackwork depicting scenes from the gladiator school. The lid lay on the table next to it. 

"You found this?" he asked.

Freda nodded. "Isn't it amazing? Grandfather has been working here for years, and this is the only intact piece that's ever been found here."

"Just one? That _is_ amazing," Andrew said. "And you found it yourself? Would you show me where?"

"Happy to. Come with me." The strange maturity was back, as Freda led the way out of the hut and padlocked it behind her.

Stephen must have caught Andrew's momentary frown because he said, _:Don't worry. Keep her occupied, and I'll take care of things.:_ He waved a hand. "You two go on. I'm just going to sit here for a moment."

"Are you well, Mr. Stevenson?" Freda asked in concern.

"It's just very warm out here," Stephen said, "and I need a bit of a breather." He lowered himself onto a bench against the hut's outer wall. "I'll just have a seat here, and catch up to you in a few moments."

Freda looked undecided. "Are you certain, Mr. Stevenson? Perhaps I should run up to the house and fetch some water for you."

"No, no, I'll be just fine. Go show Bruce where you found the vase."

"Well...if you're certain."

"Completely."

Freda turned to Andrew. "Well, then. Mr. Forbes?"

"Lead the way."

Andrew followed Freda carefully through the pickets. 

_:Andrew, I need TIM's help with this,:_ Stephen said. _:Just keep her occupied and away from the shed. I will be right back.:_

This time, Andrew was better prepared for the emptiness that he felt when he suddenly became the only Tomorrow Person on the entire planet -- and this time, he really _was_ the only one. It was very uncomfortable. In many ways, the sudden silence in his mind felt like the few times his powers had been blocked. He knew he could jaunt to anywhere he chose, but it was still unnerving. And then, before Freda had even led him to the portion of the ground from which the vase had been prised, Stephen was back.

_:Done!:_ he said. _:We can leave.:_

_:In a few minutes,:_ Andrew replied.

_:You don't need to listen to her rabbit on about it.:_

_:And yet there's no reason to be rude, either,:_ Andrew replied. And so he accompanied Freda to the spot where she'd found the vase, listened attentively to her lengthy explanation of how she had dug it out, and how she had recognized that the markings on the back of the lid were not standard Romano-British writing, and had brought it to her grandfather's attention.

"He says that the piece is museum-worthy," Freda finished. "I certainly hope so. It would be quite the triumph to be the only student in my university who had already made a contribution to archaeology."

"Indeed," Andrew said. "Well, congratulations, Miss Garner. I look forward to seeing your vase in the British museum someday. But now I think I'd best get back and make sure that Stephen -- er, Mr. Stevenson is all right."

"Of course," Freda said, and if she was disappointed at losing her audience, it didn't show.

 

**1975**

"Well, everything seems to be back in order," Stephen said. He and Andrew had spent the last hour or so tidying the Lab and stowing the gear they had borrowed. TIM had de-atomized Stephen's bloodstained medieval clothing, and they were just about ready to go. "Thanks for letting us borrow the AE suits, TIM."

"You're entirely welcome, Stephen. Any time, as you know. I hope this is not the last time I shall be seeing you."

"Well, now, you know I'm going to be back from the Trig with the others in a couple of months."

"That is not at all what I meant."

"I know, TIM. I can't make any promises, of course, but I imagine I'll be back this way. From time to time."

He turned to Andrew. "Nice meeting you, Andrew. Do say hello to the others for me."

"Are you ever going to tell me what you did to the lid?" Andrew asked.

"Oh, sorry, didn't I say?"

"You know you didn't." Andrew's eyes narrowed. "You were just waiting for me to ask!"

Stephen grinned. "Yes, all right. Guilty as charged. Well...telekinesis is one of my strongest talents. I'm quite good, actually. Anyway, I did the same thing to the lid that I did in 1974 -- changed one of the figures. The only difference was that this time, I made it so that it would revert to its original state as soon as I touched it again. Which meant that I had to wear gloves when I put it back."

"But won't it revert as soon as they pick it up to pack it?"

"Ah, no, that's the clever part," Stephen said. "It's DNA-locked. That's what I needed TIM's help for. There's a tiny bit of my blood bonded with the lid now, and when I touch it again in 1974, the DNA-lock will recognize me, and the lid will revert to its original state."

"I didn't know you could do something like that." Andrew said. "That really is quite clever."

"And it saves us from having to hunt down all of the drawings of the lid," Stephen said cheerfully, "because they won't be of the true diagram. Mission accomplished. We can go home." He paused. "Andrew, I know I said thanks before, but I want to say it again. You saved my life. Thank you."

Andrew ducked his head, embarrassed. "You're welcome. It's lucky that Peter sent me here -- you should thank him."

"Yes," Stephen replied. "I'll definitely be saying something to Peter when I get back. Which...I think I shall be doing. See you around maybe!" He folded his time disk in his hand and vanished.

"You should be going too, Andrew," TIM said gently.

Andrew took one last look around the Lab. He mounted the jaunting pad. "Bye, TIM. See you in a minute."

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and jaunted.

**1985**

He exhaled, and his shoulders relaxed, his arms falling to his sides. Before he even opened his eyes, he knew he was home. The quiet presences in his mind, the tiny noises of the Lab, everything that said _home_ to him was back. Andrew wondered how Stephen managed without all of this when he was deep in the past; he had missed it so much while he was gone.

He opened his eyes and gazed out at the Lab -- the proper Lab -- for just a moment, until his attention was caught by the frozen image on the view screen to his right. He recognized the image of himself crouched over a badly wounded Stephen; it felt like just yesterday. Actually, come to think of it -- no, wait. Not yesterday. Three days ago. Had he been gone such a short time? It seemed forever.

John, Elizabeth and TIM were gathered at that end of the lounge nearest the viewscreen. He hadn't even realized that TIM had kept a record. So much for "leave no mark."

As he watched, Elizabeth nodded at something John said, then glanced at TIM. "Better carry on with the recording, then, TIM."

"Actually," Andrew said, hearing his cue, "I could just _tell_ you about it, if you like."

He shoved the time disk in his pocket and stepped down off the jaunting pad.

 

**2483**

The chamber that Stephen had first seen in the Hall of the Eternal Order of the Guardians of Time -- when he was caught in the time trap after he'd used the unstable disk built from the diagram on the back of the lid of the gladiator vase -- had seemed cold and grand. But that chamber was, really, a prison, so of course it did. The Hall was really a complex, much like the Galactic Trig. Every inhabited planet in the galaxy had at last one Guardian assigned to it -- even planets that never developed a telepathic race had Guardians because as Stephen had told Andrew, there were always ways to get around the fact that you had to be a telepath to access the Time Lanes.

And where people lived and worked, there were places to relax. It was in the lounge that Stephen favored after a mission that he found Peter, sipping -- of all things -- a chocolate milkshake.

"Stephen! I didn't know you were back! How did your mission go? Where were you -- the fifteenth century?'

Stephen settled into a chair at the small table and signaled for his own drink. When it was on the table in front of him, he sipped at it, then leaned forward.

"Peter," he said, "let me tell you a story...."

**Author's Note:**

> Notes
> 
>   1. Regarding the Lab(s): The Piccolo Books novelization which includes "The Lost Gods," "Hitler's Last Secret," and "The Thargon Menace," says this of the Lab: _The new Lab was born out of necessity. After the Secret Intelligence Service had discovered the whereabouts of the old one the Tomorrow People had never felt secure, in spite of the defences put up by TIM: a Spectra Shift to hide the Lab and a Force Field barrier to protect it. So they had decided to move, and at the same time build themselves a larger and more comfortable Headquarters._ I don't think any of that is actually said in the series (which I rewatched in its entirety before beginning this story), but it makes more sense than the old Lab being so completely remodeled. As far as the series goes, the new set had to be built after a studio fire.
>   2. Andrew's present is 1985, which is, of course, post-canon, and is the year that _Back to the Future_ was released. _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ was 1981, and _Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom_ was 1984.
>   3. The parts of the story which take place in 1975 are set between "The Revenge of Jedikiah" and "One Law" when the Tomorrow People have left Earth, possibly forever, and the Lab is abandoned -- and TIM with it. Poor TIM.
>   4. The other important episode is "A Rift in Time," in which Peter sends dream messages to the Tomorrow People, they find the gladiator vase, Stephen foolishly jaunts in front of an archaeologist and a parapsychologist (which will lead to both trouble and an ally later), and some naughty individual has introduced the steam engine into Roman Britain in the first century AD.
>   5. There really is an [excavation of a Roman town at Silchester.](http://www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/) For purposes of this story, the [Victorian excavations,](https://www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/i3/victorians/vic_home.php) which actually ended in 1909 had to be stretched out a few years; in this timeline, the excavation was ended by the outbreak of WWI. It's conceivable that one stubborn old archaeologist with a bit of money and a pet project would keep going, isn't it? 
>   6. I based Freda Garner's birthdate on that of the actress who played her ([Sylvia Coleridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Coleridge)) plus enough time to make her a teenager when Stephen and Andrew come to call. (Sylvia was born in 1909, the year that the actual excavation ended.)
> 



End file.
